Boullier: Lotus can close the gap with front runners

Lotus team missed second pre-season test and they are completed final test but not done more mileage with brand new Lotus chassis. Lotus team boss Eric Boullier says that his team will able to close the gap between front runners.

Autosport asked Lotus that Red Bull and McLaren remain favourites heading for Melbourne: Lotus team boss Boullier said: “If I think this I should give up now.

“What is very encouraging is that even if we believe strongly that they are ahead of us, and then the gap last year to this year has been reduced so it shows we can catch up. We obviously need to push more on this but we can close the gap, and it is up to us to do better this year and do even better for next year.”

“First of all this is testing, so even if everybody is watching the lap times of everybody, we have a long range of processes to go through and to test first of all reliability and temperature range, and different logging,” said Boullier. “So it is only testing – qualifying will be in Melbourne and not before.

“The good thing is that the car was good from day one out of the box. The car itself has been very well designed and it is clearly a step up over the past years. That has allowed us to put a lot of miles behind us at Jerez, and then we had a little bit of a setback [at the second test], missing the four days, and [the final test] I think was not bad.

“We had to make some compromises on the testing because we were missing four days, so we had to combine eight days with four days, but all in all it was not bad.”

“Clearly the basis is very good,” said the team boss. “The car is not easy, but the drivers like it – it makes them comfortable and confident in the car. The car is reacting well, matching the simulation figure. So far it is a good basis to start with.”

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